Grab those and here's what I wanted you to discuss
with a close by partner, ready?
What do you think if you added up,
if you added up credit cards, personal loans,
payday lending, automobiles, mortgage, add the mortgage
in there and this is for everybody,
the average American, what do you think their debt balance
would be, the average American, discuss, ready go, discuss.
Total debt.
What do you think?
I'll get you my stuff off.
All right, we had a lot of numbers thrown at us.
According to, and I got to actually,
I got to look at my source here.
I have a source.
Where is it?
It may be in my office.
Oh, here we go.
Oh, this is according to Experian.com,
a consumer credit review, all right?
The number is, does anybody wanna do the drum roll?
96,371 dollars.
Okay, the question was, Mike, thanks for keeping up.
The question was, the average American holds
the debt balance of so much and that would be everything.
All right, yeah, there you go.
That is good, yeah.
So that total comes from a variety of sources,
credit cards, car loans, student loans, mortgages,
and of course some people, if you factor in kids,
kids don't necessarily have loans if you factor in,
you know, hopefully not, some kids may,
depending on how their parents raise them or whatever.
And it depends on what you call a kid.
There's kids who are looking younger and younger to me,
for sure, that's part of it.
So debt is a very normal experience
in the American culture, right?
And, but it doesn't mean it's good.
The Bible says that the borrower is slave to the lender,
you know, and that's not a good thing.
Tonight, I wanna talk a little bit about what,
about a different kind of debt.
I'm not gonna grill you about your finances.
We're not gonna do that tonight,
but you and I had a debt, didn't we?
We had a sin debt and that debt was an unpayable debt.
It was the kind of debt that we could work 24 seven, 365,
and no matter what we do, we couldn't pay it off.
And that debt was a sin debt, right?
One of the things about the religions of the world
is almost every religion really kind of comes down
to the same thing outside of what I would talk about
with biblical Christianity, and that is,
because there's even some forms of unbiblical Christianity
that would say that basically how it all works out
is that there's good people, there is a good God,
and there's a good place, right?
And good people who do good things get to a good place,
and bad people who do bad things go to a bad place.
And the question you gotta ask is how good is good enough,
right?
What is good, first of all, what's good?
Can your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds?
And even in our own system of justice,
we understand that good deeds can't outweigh bad deeds, right?
If I were to murder somebody and I get caught,
there's cameras everywhere.
Have you noticed there's cameras everywhere?
And if I were to get caught, and I were to stand before a judge
and the judge were to say, hey, Ben,
I see it says here you're a pastor.
That means you probably do a lot of things
that even people who disagree with you think are good,
you try to help people that are struggling with their marriages,
you try to help the poor,
you try to get people to do good things,
you volunteer a lot of your time, you're a nice guy,
and I could kind of come up with a list of all of my credentials
and all the things I try to do that's good.
And I could say, judge, here's all the things I do.
Can we just let this one go?
And you know what he would say?
The good things you do can't make up for the fact
that there's somebody that's dead who agrees with me.
Our good deeds can't make up for our bad deeds.
If you do the crime, you do the time.
So we have this sin debt.
And when you start thinking about the way God thinks about sin,
man, you sin a lot.
And we sin a lot.
This debt that we have maybe financially
is only a shadow of a greater debt we all do owe,
and that's the debt of sin.
Accumulated over a lifetime of sinful, sometimes rebellious,
choices made against a holy God.
But unlike the rest of our debts,
the debt of sin can never be cleared in our own effort.
Because part of the problem is,
one way to stop going in debt and to get out of debt
is to stop going in debt.
What do they call it, a plasticity?
Cut up the credit cards, sell the vehicles,
sell the house, sell some stuff.
Have you ever heard of Facebook marketplace?
Make the kids worried that you're going to sell them.
That's how you get out of debt.
If you have a lot of debt, that's what you got to do.
The problem is, we are sinners.
Have you known anybody that was a Christian and a sinner?
Raise your hand if you're a Christian and a sinner.
That's all of us, right?
So we can't even stop.
We've got our problem, don't we?
We've got a problem.
And that problem is, we have a sin debt
and that sin debt keeps accumulating.
Even when we try really hard and we give our effort to it,
man, just trying won't make it happen.
We don't need just to do better.
We need a spirit transformation, right?
That's what needs to happen.
And so here's the bottom line, though.
Jesus came and he paid our debt.
He came to pay our debt.
And his payment makes possible for us to be free from the debt
of sin and not just free from the debt of it
and not just free from the penalty of it,
but even one day to be free from the presence of it.
It's going to be an amazing thing.
Tonight we're going to look at the death of Jesus.
And I know we just went through the Easter season,
but we're talking about Jesus and this seems to be good timing
for us to get there.
Jesus died to pay the debt of our sin.
That's why he came.
He came to pay our sins debt.
So what did the death of Jesus accomplish?
If you have your Bibles, we're going to look at Luke chapter 23.
And we're going to look at what the death of Jesus accomplished
for us.
Now if you get to Luke chapter 23, I need to pull it up here
so I'm looking at the context and what the Bible says.
This is the chapter in Luke where he talks about,
where the Bible tells us about Jesus' death.
And when you get down to verse 32, here's what it says.
And there were also two other malifactors led with him to be
put to death.
And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary,
there they crucified him and the malifactors,
one on the right hand and the other on the left.
Then Jesus, then said Jesus, Father forgive them for they know
not what they do and they parted his raiment and cast lots.
We'll stop there for a second.
This is a very simple passage in the sense that,
in the sense that it's just telling the story of what exactly
happened at the cross.
When you talk about malifactors, somebody raise your hand and
tell me what's a malifactor, who are these people?
They're called thieves in another spot.
They're criminals.
They're people whose crimes obviously from the Roman
perspective would be punished by capital punishment, right?
Crucifixion is not something that's always been around.
The Romans perfected it.
I don't think they invented it, but they perfected it.
So they are like many efficient bureaucracies.
They're not just going to kill one man at one time.
They're going to kill three at one time.
And actually this is a fulfillment of prophecy because it
is in the Old Testament that he numbered with the transgressors.
We know that this is a fulfillment of prophecy even that he
would be here with these thieves.
But I think it's interesting what Jesus says.
I've done series as before.
In fact, this may be something I do again at some point about
Jesus' statements from the cross.
You can read the different gospels account for different things
that he said.
One of the things he said, here in Luke's accounting of it, the
first thing he says is directed to the father.
Father forgive them for they know not what they do.
Does that mean that they had no cognition of what they were
doing?
Does that mean that they didn't, they couldn't, if you were to
ask somebody standing there, what are you guys doing?
Well, we're crucifying these three criminals, right?
What was it that they didn't get?
They did not understand the gravity and the weight of the
identity and the, and exactly what was happening.
I mean, at the end of the day, who here signed a check in the
last couple of weeks?
Who here wrote a date somewhere?
Did you write a date on that check?
Did you write the date down today?
What's today's date?
April 24th, 2024.
That means before 2024 there was a 2023 and a 2022, 2021.
What am I trying to say?
You rolled that back all the way, something went down at zero.
Has this world been around longer than 2,000 years?
We're telling, even people who hate God are telling time by
the Son of God, right?
And so something went down and what was happening was monumental
and redemptive history and in all of history Jesus, the Son of
God, was dying.
He was not saying that they didn't understand physically what
was happening, what he was saying is they don't understand that
they're crucifying God.
And it gives you a clue as to what Jesus' attitude towards, he
was dying for the very people who were sinning.
He was dying for the sin that they were committing by
crucifying him.
I believe with all my heart that there were people at the
crucifixion who later believed in who Jesus was and what he did
and call themselves Christians today.
We know that because Mary was there and John was there, at
least them, right?
And so what we see is that Jesus died and here's the point, he
died for the remission of sin.
He died for the remission or the forgiveness of sins and that's
obvious even in what he's saying in the moment here of
crucifixion, just the very beginning of it.
You also see here it talks about they parted and they parted
his raiments and cast lots.
This is not in my notes but I think this is interesting.
If you're everybody, we'll go to Psalm chapter number 22.
Psalm chapter 22.
My Bible software that I use on my iPad, Esau, it's pretty fun.
I like it a lot.
It says a heading.
Does yours have a heading at the top of Psalm 22?
Does it give an attribution to who wrote Psalm 22?
Psalm of who?
David.
Who's David?
King of Israel, right?
This is David of David and Goliath fame.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why are they far from helping me and from the words of my roaring?
Oh, my God, I cry in the, what does it say?
It's not in the time.
But thou hearest not in the died season and not silent.
That holy that inhabits the praise of Israel.
Look down to verse 6.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn, they shoot out the lips.
They shake the head saying, he trusted in the Lord that he
would deliver him.
Let him deliver him saying he delighted in him.
Go down to verse 14.
I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax.
It is melted in the midst of my bowels.
There's an interesting thing going on here.
David's talking about himself, but he's also prophetically
talking about Jesus.
So you have some of the things that you're going, well, you know,
the first verse, what does that remind you of?
Look back at the first verse, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?
What does that remind you of?
What Jesus said on the cross.
Now, there's some kind of prophecies that you can fulfill.
There are self-fulfilling prophecies, have you ever heard
of those?
There's some prophecies where you can say, you know, predict
something is going to happen on Friday.
And then on Friday you just remember to do it.
That's kind of like a to-do list, right?
You know what I mean?
Like I'm going to do this on Friday.
It's a calendar.
So someone said, Jesus said what he knew was in the Old
Testament.
But there's some of the things in here that those people that
hated him were fulfilling.
People that knew this psalm were doing what's here in the psalm.
For instance, it says that they were shooting at the lip and
laughing at the scorn.
Was that happening at the crucifixion?
Absolutely.
If you go down to verse 1 that was talking about all my bones
around a joint, verse 14, I poured out like water, all my
bones around a joint.
My heart is like wax, it's melted in the midst of my bones.
There was something, this was written before crucifixion was
a thing.
And that's a great description, verse number 14, of what happens
at crucifixion.
Bones go out of joint.
Remember when Jesus gave up the ghost and the Bible says he
gave up the ghost and the Romans, what did they do?
They took a spear and they plunged it into the side of Jesus
and what did it say?
Blood and water flowed.
And that describes a medical condition that only happens after
someone dies.
It's what happens when the heart literally does what's saying
here and that's exactly what happened.
He says, look down to verse 18, they part my garments among
them and cast lots upon my vassure.
Now go back to our passage in Luke 32, verse number 34, then
Jesus said, Jesus' father forgive them for they know what
they do and they parted his raiment and cast lots.
Do we have a Bible that's pretty incredible?
Psalm of David written hundreds of years before Jesus came and
described what happens at his crucifixion.
Why did God plan to become flesh and dwell among us and then
die?
One reason is for the remission of our sins.
Number two, Jesus died for the redemption of our souls.
The redemption of our souls.
Look at verse 35.
And the people stood beholding, again this is connected to what
we just read in Luke, sorry in Psalm chapter 22.
The rule is also with him, derided him saying he saved others,
let him save himself if he be Christ the chosen of God.
And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and offering
him vinegar and saying if he be the king of the Jews, that would
be the king of the Jews save thyself.
And our superscription also is written over him in letters of
Greek and Latin and Hebrew.
This is the king of the Jews.
The king of the Jews.
This is what the sign read which was put on the cross of Jesus.
Though the sign was meant as mockery, it was ironically the
statement of at least part of the truth, right?
Jesus was and is the king of the Jews but that's not all.
He's the king of the universe.
Verse 39, one of the malefactors which were hang railed on him
saying if thou be Christ save thyself and us.
I love this.
But the other answering rebuked him saying, does thou not fear
God?
Seeing thou art in the same condemnation.
And we indeed justly, what is he saying?
We have the same condemnation.
What's condemnation?
We have the same punishment.
We have the same verdict.
We have the same issue going on.
We're on the cross just like he is.
But we are here, it says justly.
Do you ever, brother Dave, you go to the prison sometimes.
You've done that ministry before.
Have you ever heard somebody that's in jail claim to be innocent
of the charges?
Has anybody ever heard of that happening?
Who thinks it's more often the case that people in jail say I'm
here but I'm innocent or I'm here but I'm guilty and I should be
here.
Which one do you think is more?
Probably innocent.
There may be some that say I'm here because I did wrong.
It just depends.
I'm sure both happen.
This guy is saying we're here and we did the crime.
Right?
But this guy is innocent.
31, we indeed justly for we receive the due reward of our
deeds but this man hath done nothing amiss.
And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest
into thy kingdom.
Now get the picture.
What was the claim of the religious leaders against Jesus?
What was capital punishment that they then had to take to Rome?
Why were they, what was the charge?
The charge was blasphemy and what was blasphemous?
He made himself to be God.
They packaged that in the language of he calls himself the king of
the Jews.
Why?
Because the Messiah they knew was going, is going to be a king.
Right?
They know that this Messiah is going to end up on David's throne.
So if this Jesus is calling himself the Messiah or the son of
God, he's also claiming to be king and king of the Jews.
So why would they say that to Rome?
Why would they say that to Pilate and to Herod?
Because that would be like trying to take Rome's position.
Who's king?
Caesar.
In the early church, the issue wasn't for Rome that they were
saying that Jesus is Lord.
The issue wasn't exactly only that they were saying Jesus is Lord,
it's that they wouldn't say that Caesar is Lord.
Does that make sense?
It's not just that they're not going to say Jesus is, that's fine.
You want to believe in God's, believe in God's.
They had plenty of them.
Who agrees?
The Romans had a lot of God's.
So many of them probably were glad and in fact that's kind of
what happened with Constantine.
He just made Christianity the state religion.
So that wasn't the issue.
The issue was I'm not going to say that Caesar is Lord.
So Rome has a problem with people trying to say they're going to
be king.
And I think what happened is the Pharisees said the way we're
going to be able to get him for blasphemy which transgresses our
own people and to get Rome to approve killing him is to say
that he's a king.
So they put king up over his cross.
That was a pronouncement of what they thought was the kind of
thing that would say, hey, we're all in agreement.
This guy is not a king and we're killing him.
This malefactor, this criminal looks at the other criminal.
And of course he's experiencing some of the supernatural things
happening at the cross.
And he looks over at Jesus and says to the malefactor, we're
guilty.
This guy's not guilty.
And then he looks at a naked man on a cross who claimed to be
king and says to him, what?
Lord, remember me when you come into thy kingdom.
What do you have to believe to be saved?
You have to believe that Jesus is who he said he was.
That he is Lord.
Now there is a kind of theology that talks about lordship
salvation and lordship salvation says you have to make him Lord
of your life essentially.
It's kind of a, in my opinion, it's a putting together of
sanctification and salvation into one thing.
When I got saved, when I received Jesus' Savior, when I
called on the name of the Lord to save me, I knew that I was a
sinner.
But I didn't know how much of a sinner I was.
Because I was nine years old.
Right?
And before that I didn't have the Holy Spirit living inside of
me.
That makes sense?
And one of the things the Holy Spirit does is convictive sin.
Right?
And so what am I trying to say?
I think to be saved you have to acknowledge that you are a
sinner and you have to know that you are a sinner and you have
to know that.
But you don't necessarily know the extent of all that God needs
to do in your life one day.
Does that make sense?
This guy understood that he's a sinner.
He believed that Jesus is who he said he was.
He didn't have a firm grasp on all the theology, but he believed
enough of the theology to believe this.
This guy can get me to a kingdom.
He's a king that can get me to a kingdom.
And there seems to be something supernatural and spiritual
about this kingdom because he's a naked guy on a cross.
What's he going to do?
He must be God.
And what did Jesus say?
I love this.
And Jesus said unto him, verily.
You know what verily means?
Truly, but it's even more than that.
You know.
Have you ever heard somebody say honestly, blah, blah, blah,
blah, and you're like, why did you have to say honestly?
Are you dishonest all the rest of the time?
But he says here, verily, like you can take it to the bank.
Today, you shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Isn't that awesome?
He called on the name of the Lord.
Now, did that, the question is, is he up in heaven going, oh, look
how good I asked that question.
Look how I got to heaven.
Is that what he's thinking?
Did the prayer, if you want to call it a prayer, the speaking to
Jesus save him?
Or did, no, who saved him?
Jesus saved him.
What did Jesus respond to?
He responded to the guy's faith.
This guy believed that that guy on the cross can get me somewhere
I need to go.
He believed it and he was saved.
You know how you got saved?
Exactly the same way.
Isn't that good?
Why did Jesus come?
He came to redeem us, to redeem our souls.
It's not kind of interesting.
A bunch of people kept telling to Jesus, if you really are, save
yourself and us.
Right?
Did they walk away saved from that?
No.
Because they didn't believe.
This guy actually did believe one day we'll meet him.
Isn't that cool?
It's awesome.
Interesting too, a couple of things.
They tried to offer a vinegar.
He denied that.
There was a, it says vinegar mixed with a gall.
Some say that that would have been some kind of thing that
would dull the pain.
And I think it's interesting that Jesus didn't do it, don't you?
He took the full brunt of what he was dealing with.
Here's a third point.
Why did Jesus die?
What did Jesus' death do?
Jesus died to provide a route to our salvation.
A route to our salvation.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.
No man comes to the Father but by me.
Right?
Look at verse 44.
And it was about the ninth hour and there was darkness over all
the earth until the ninth hour and the sun was darkened and the
veil of the temple was rent in the midst.
A couple of things.
The sixth hour was what time?
Six hours noon.
Their day started at six in the morning.
So the sixth hour would have been noon.
How many of you guys were at the eclipse?
Did you guys go outside?
That was amazing.
That was insane.
Did you notice the difference between a sliver of the sun and
then total, what do they call it?
Totality.
If you just get that little, yeah, anyway.
Here's my experience.
I was sitting out here in a lawn chair out in the parking lot and
that final little bit came and it was getting darker and darker
and then it went to dark and it basically looked like a sunrise
everywhere.
Did you guys see that?
I was so glad I was here at the church because where I was
sitting, I could see the total horizon basically.
The dome was in the way a little bit but basically because of
being out with the fields and everything, there weren't a lot
of buildings and you could just see the totes.
It's awesome.
So when I think of darkness, and I don't know if it was darker
than this in Jesus' moment, but it says it's a darkness, and it
was a kind of darkness that was obviously supernatural, right?
That's what's happening here.
Anybody here think it was kind of amazing that they could
calculate down to the moments of when this is all going to
happen.
So I was out there, the lights went down and all of our, like,
apparently we have a lot of sensors on the buildings of lights
that come on when it goes dark and that was really crazy.
So imagine at noon from the 6th hour to the 3 p.m., you have
this darkness over all the earth until the 9th hour, just this
amazing, there's no light, it's just dark.
And the sun was darkened in the veil of the, so when you think
about darkness, I believe with all my heart that this was God's
pronouncement over what was happening.
What I mean by that is that when things are dark and verboding,
what do you think of?
Who thinks it's happy?
If your kids do a coloring book and they draw a picture and
they're trying to draw something happy, there's a sun with the
smiley face, anybody ever get that picture?
Horses running in the fields or whatever.
If your kid is only drawing, like, darkness, you need a
picture, right?
Even kids understand that darkness is like a negative kind of a
bad thing.
And here's what's going on, there's this darkness that's
coming.
Often in the, even in the Old Testament, that's a description of
judgment.
And that's exactly what happened here.
In another passage, while this darkness was happening, my God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Here you have Jesus crying with a loud voice.
And he said, Father, into my hands, into thy hands I commend
my spirit.
And having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
I want us to look a little bit on that verse number 45, though.
The Bible says in the veil of the temple was rent in the
middle.
I know this gets taught a lot.
I know we just went through Hebrews, but I want to say that
this is an incredible passage of Scripture and an incredible
another picture.
The darkness was one thing.
This renting down the middle, another passage tells us it's
from top to bottom.
And this was a picture of what was made possible by Jesus'
death.
In the temple, like in the tabernacle before it, there was a
place that was the holy of holies.
It's where the Ark of the Covenant was.
It's where only a priest could go, only the high priest could go,
only once a year.
And he would take the blood of a spotless lamb, and he would, on
the day of atonement, the day of expiating the sin of the nation,
atoning for sin, he would take the blood of a spotless lamb, and
with hissep and a bowl, he would dip it, and he would sprinkle it
on the mercy seat on the Ark in that holy place.
That holy of holies was the place that was, now, is God
everywhere?
God is everywhere.
But his manifest presence was often in the temple.
When they dedicated the temple, the shakina glory of God came
down and represented where God was.
And he's so holy and other than that you can't just go in there.
The Bible says no one seen God and lived, right?
And in that sense, if you see God without any kind of protection,
without any kind of veil, and Colossians talks about that,
and Hebrews talks about that, you fall over dead.
But here, because of what Jesus did, when he dies, the veil that
separated the people from God is torn from top to bottom.
And this is what Paul said as a commentary about the difference
between what happened in that old covenant and what happens now.
He says this, what?
Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?
What you have of God and you are not your own for you are bought
with a price?
What was the price?
The blood of Jesus.
You were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's.
We don't go to a temple to get into the presence of God.
We believe in God and he makes his abode in us.
That's the difference.
He gave us access, a route to the Father.
I am the way Jesus said, the truth and the life.
No man comes to the Father but by me.
I love this.
In verse 46, sorry, verse 47, now when the centurion saw what was
done, he glorified God saying, certainly this was a righteous
man and all the people that came together to that site,
beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts and
returned and all his acquaintances and the women that followed
him with Galilee standing stood afar off beholding these things.
You know, you read in the book of Acts later that there were
actually Pharisees and priests coming to Christ in that early
church.
And I wonder if some of the very people that were instrumental
and seeing Jesus get put on the cross began to think differently
of them at the cross.
What's kind of funny too is some of those same people caused
problems in the church.
So I'm not saying the same people that were at the cross.
I don't have any way to know that for sure but people that were
some of those religious leaders that were trying to combine the
law and grace, that was kind of an interesting thing.
But here's what's amazing.
Jesus paid for the sin of the people who were killing him.
Who were mocking him.
And when he did it and when it was completed, supernaturally,
the veil torn and let everybody know by the blood of Christ,
by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the grace of God,
you and I can go to God even like tonight.
You know, you don't have to be in this building to have prayer
time.
You don't have to be in this building to have prayer time.
You have prayer time outside of this building to have a dwarf
what you do in this building.
Right?
Because this is just, I'm glad we have a building.
Are you guys glad for our building?
Find a home under the dome, that's what I say.
But this building is going away.
It is.
We're going to try to keep up with it as best we can.
We've got Jeff helping us out, trustees.
Jeff, you know, we're going to try to keep up with it.
But this isn't a sanctuary.
Not in that way.
Not like the temple was.
This is a building.
It's a place where we meet.
It's a special place.
People get saved here, aren't you glad for that?
You made decisions here yourself.
We worship God here.
I'm not saying it's not special.
What I'm saying is there's nothing about this place that gets
saved.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't assemble.
Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves in the manner some
is.
Right?
It's right to do.
But like Jesus said to that woman at the well, there's coming a
time where neither in Jerusalem nor in the mountains will you
worship.
Those who worship him will worship him in what?
Spirit and in truth.
In truth.
That's the way we are.
To provide a root for our salvation.
I know it's Wednesday night.
I know almost everybody in here by name.
And I've heard many of your testimonies.
Not all of them.
And can I be as bold as to say that if you stand before God,
all of us are going to stand before God one day.
And you getting to heaven is not going to be based on any good
works that you do.
Your church membership.
I mean we believe in a regenerate church membership.
We make sure people know Christ and have a solid salvation
testimony before they can be an official member of our church.
And so in that sense, you know, but church membership doesn't
save you.
You can swindle us and tell us you're saved.
And somehow get your name on the roll.
But that doesn't put your name on the roll.
Are you with me?
Has there ever been a person that was a member of Trinity Baptist
Church and lost?
Probably has happened.
Not because we wanted it to happen.
Right?
Teaching Sunday school, being the son of a preacher man,
it ain't going to get you there.
God has no grandchildren.
What's going to get you there is Jesus.
And Bible says without faith it's impossible to please God.
So what is this death on the cross all about?
The Bible says the gospel is this.
This is the gospel by which we are saved.
It's the thing we ought to proclaim that Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures.
That he was buried and rose again the third day according to the
scriptures.
The Bible says if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord
Jesus.
And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.
Why was he dead?
Because he died on the cross.
Why did God raise him from the dead?
To prove that what he did on the cross he accepted.
Are you with me?
So in that Romans 10, 9, you have the understanding of Jesus
as God, of him being innocent, of him dying for our sins, of him
being buried, and him actually bodily rising.
If you believe that, confess with your mouth.
This is what the heart man believes unto righteousness with the
mouth confessions made to salvation.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Are you with me?
Prayer doesn't save you.
Jesus saves you.
When you put your faith and trust in Christ, the Bible says you
can know heaven as your home.
You can be right with God.
You can be saved.
That's what we call being obedient to the gospel.
That's how it happens.
Why did Jesus die?
What does his death bring us?
It provides remission for our sins, redemption for our soul.
And our root for salvation.
That's what it did.
Would you bow your heads and close your eyes with me?
Pastor Ben, that seems weird to give a salvation message on a
Wednesday night.
I don't think there's a bad time for it.
If you're here tonight and you're realizing I'm a sinner,
I'm a sinner, I'm a sinner.
And I've been trusting in my good work.